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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

Poem-A-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 200 new, previously unpublished poems by today's talented poets each year. On weekdays, poems are accompanied by exclusive commentary by the poets. The series highlights classic poems on weekends. Launched in 2006, Poem-a-Day is now distributed via email, web, and social media to 350,000+ readers free of charge and is available for syndication by King Features.

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“There is an art to holding onto beauty and an art to letting it go. I am far more desperately practiced in the former. A couple years ago I had the opportunity to set down my regular routines and travel very freely. I wanted to write a poem that could serve as testimony to that experience, but could also acknowledge its passing. Sometimes letting go of beauty yields the greatest beauty of all: returning to your life, to the warm rooms of the familiar, and seeing it turn wild and vivid in front of you.”—Jay Deshpande

Actually Very Simple

He came back from halfway around the world like that,tongue tied around him like a scarf. Everything set before himset to bursting. The fear that what he’d seen—what had been inside him—that oneclear note—now would slip away. He’d go backto an electric life, stupid with administration.How does one re-enter a calendar?He was still in love with the yellow dirt seen at the hourof the museum’s closing, two weeks before the Palio.With the sound he almost certainly heard his blood makeas he ate the last bite of liver toastand finished off his wine, at night, in a tower besidea total field. Or the remarkable looka girl had given the bushes at 3 a.m.on a hill above the Aegean before she let himpull her pool-soaked dress up above her thighs.He was still in love with all the cataclysms in his flesh.Even though none of that was real anymore.And it was his human duty to go onward, forget it all,get caught back up in the cloud of the thing.The next morning he woke up, fully home,ignorant as ever, just perhaps a light along the edgeof responsibility, the tasks that called him by a name.As if their stress and weight existed only didn’t.A brief glimpse, and then that part of what’s just in the mindscampering back into undergrowth. (They called it capriola,which was perfect.) And then—drawing himself out of bedand lacing up his shoes. Getting out and running amongbuildings, the stacked reds and blues of Brooklyn. Gapingat the faces of his neighbors, or the way a leaf hangs,or a swatch of pavement wet between parked cars.Huffing widely at it, and running a little slower.Gathering it all up into his mouth.